Black Scorpion (27 page)

And in that moment a convoy of police cars tore onto the scene, a parade of officers armed with assault rifles spilling out and taking up posts around the building's perimeter or rushing inside.

“Looks like we're going to have to change our plans,” said Michael.

 

SIXTY

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Scarlett heard the key turning in the lock, the heavy wood door starting to ease open.

She had awoken initially with her head resting on a heavy plank table. Jolted by the shock of her unfamiliar surroundings, Scarlett jerked her hands upward to find they were bound by chains that ran through dual slots in the table descending all the way to heavy bolts drilled into the floor. Her legs, too, were chained and similarly affixed to another bolt drilled next to the first.

At first glance the room seemed to have no window. Then, on second, Scarlett realized there were actually two equally spaced on the wall to her left. But they were covered by shutters made of the same light wood paneling that adorned the walls. She noticed the fittings had been tied in a sash formed of chain link through which a lock had been bolted, denying her any sense of time's passage since she'd been taken, whether this was day or night.

Scarlett sat up all the way, her stiff spine crackling. Her head was pounding, each breath drawing a throb of its own. Scarlett realized her upper arm was sore in the same place it was after she got her annual flu shot back home.

What had they given her?

Some sort of sedative for sure, denying her any memory beyond being dragged out the rear of the bar that opened onto an alley, and thrust into the back of a waiting van.

They knew I was coming. The bartender was waiting for me.…

Scarlett again tried to recall what little exchange there'd been with Michael Tiranno. Had she told him where she was, what had happened? Then the door opened all the way and she stopped trying.

A burly man wearing a dark blue uniform, complete with tassels riding the shoulders, entered. He stood board stiff and had the look of a man who practiced his stance and posture in the mirror. He was flanked on either side by men wearing stiff low-rise jackets with holstered pistols clipped to their belts.

“I am Colonel Gastman,” the uniformed figure announced. “I wanted to make sure you are enjoying your stay with us, that you have everything you need.”

Scarlett stretched her arms out enough to rattle her chains. “I'm an American citizen.”

“We are well aware of that.”

“I want to call my embassy. I have nothing to say to you until you let me call my embassy.”

“You misunderstand, young lady. You are here for your own safety and protection.”

“I don't believe you.”

“That does not change the fact that you are in danger and, as commander of this post, it is my duty to protect you.”

“Then let me call my embassy.”

“In time. For now, you are under our protection.”

Scarlett leaned as far forward over the table as her bonds would allow. “You work for the man in the mask.”

“What man in a mask?”

“The one who ordered my team killed,” she followed, without missing a beat. “The one who kidnapped the young women and children from the village of Vadja. It's him you should be after, those villagers you should be protecting.”

“I will see you safely transported in the morning,” the colonel said, instead of responding.

“Transported
where
?”

“A place where you will be safe, a place from where you can call anyone you like.”

“He's coming for me, isn't he? The man in the mask is coming for me.”

“I don't know this masked man. Your safety is my only concern.”

He handed a set of keys to the man on his right.

“We are required to perform a search of your person before you are transferred.” A hint of a smile crossed Colonel Gastman's face, as he pulled a plastic glove over his right hand. “I promise to make this as painless as possible.”

And he was moving toward Scarlett when explosions rattled the building, all the lights dying in the next instant.

 

SIXTY-ONE

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The guards who'd remained posted along the SRI building perimeter paid little heed to the approaching garbage truck until they realized it was angled straight for the iron fence and picking up speed. Its headlights looked dim and cloudy, barely denting the night. Nothing was revealed in its cab when the guards closest to the stairs opened fire, stitching a jagged design across the windshield and hood, which burst upward under the barrage. The engine belched steam as the truck crashed through the fence and slammed into the building façade.

“Now!” Alexander signaled Michael as they jogged in the garbage truck's wake.

In the same moment, Alexander touched a key on his digital detonator rigged to the plastic explosives he'd pulled from the duffel bag that had been waiting for them in the Alfa Romeo, now packed into the stolen garbage truck's cab. Michael felt the explosion suck the air out of him, as deafening as it was blinding, the entire front of the truck turned into a shrapnel bomb that obliterated anyone within twenty feet of the entrance while decimating the building façade.

Alexander tucked a hood over his face and watched Michael do the same. “Your goggles,” he reminded, both of them dressed in black military assault uniforms associated with special operations forces.

Michael fit the prototype for the next stage of night-vision goggles being developed by Tyrant Technologies over his eyes. Specially formulated, lightweight lenses coated with a clear resin designed to magnify available light while looking and fitting like ordinary sports goggles. Much less bulky and cumbersome than the current models being employed by the military today.

“Nice to have a chance to test them personally.”

“Stay in my shadow until we're inside,” Alexander ordered, sliding into motion.

Michael followed, feet rolling over the rubble shed by the blast strewn all the way to the street, straight for the smoke and lingering flames. Stray gunshots rang out and he was conscious of Alexander returning the fire one way and then the other, seeming to hit everything he aimed at. Michael added his own bullets as his senses caught up with his consciousness, the feeling nothing like firing practice rounds at all.

The rubble reminded him of the brushy, hard-packed trails Paddy left him to negotiate in bare feet in the French Guiana jungle. He understood in that moment better than ever how men like Alexander came to be. How much practice was required to survive moments like this where a single misstep could easily mean death.

Michael began clacking off single shots with his submachine gun, a Heckler & Koch MP5, aimed at motion still rendered desperate by the explosion that had laid waste to the building. As Alexander had anticipated, their timing was perfect. Surging up the pile of rocks that had been the front steps and into the building, just as the forces concentrated inside were fighting to recover their bearings from the shock and overcome the debris hurtled inward by the blast. It smelled just as the refuse of Max Price's Maximus Casino had after it imploded, the soot and gravelly grime washing through the air of the Strip like a blanket.

Michael realized he was holding his breath, still firing at anything that moved. He stumbled a few times over a floor littered with wall fragments and seared metal of the garbage truck along with chunks of tire rubber and a wheel somehow spinning on the floor. The interior was dark and smoke-rich, stealing sight of Alexander from him except for the muzzle flash of his sound-suppressed submachine gun firing left and forward, taking out all visible cameras first, while Michael advanced aiming his fire to the right through the haze of the emergency lighting that had kicked on once the explosion had cut the primary power.

They reached a set of stairs covered in bloodred carpeting now streaked with dust and more pieces of the shattered façade, just as four gunmen surged downward shooting blindly. Alexander shoved Michael aside, out of their narrow fire zone, both of them opening up with full automatic sprays that left the four uniformed men tumbling downward to land at the foot of the stairs in a heap.

Alexander was firing at another figure who'd appeared on the next landing up, when Michael heard the clatter of boots clacking over the same rubble they'd just negotiated. He swung and opened up with a fresh spray on the front door where two figures who'd survived the blast had just charged inside. Dropped them both, but felt his submachine gun click empty and cursed himself for not having kept better track of his bullets. He dove to the floor, reloading as he rolled beneath a fresh spray of fire, and glimpsing Alexander twirling to gun down another pair pouring inside after the first.

That exposed him to a concentrated assault from the second-floor landing, forcing him to spin to the cover of the nearest stud-bearing wall. Michael had just lurched back to his feet when he saw Alexander yank the pin from one of his grenades and hurl it upward. It exploded while still in the air, a single bright flash that blinded Michael even as his ears began ringing again, all sound shut out for the moment. He thought he heard Alexander calling to him but wasn't sure until he saw his lithe shape flying up the stairs through a wave of descending smoke that looked like a storm cloud.

Michael started to pull himself back to his feet only to realize, incredibly, that he was already standing. Starting up the stairs as the soft spits of Alexander's silenced submachine gun clacked again and again, conscious for the first time in that moment of the horrible cries of pain that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

Alexander was waiting for him on the second-floor landing, Michael reaching it just as fresh fire resounded from an open doorway down the hall. Alexander rolled a fresh grenade along the dark wood floor. It erupted in a blinding flash that rained a shower of dark smoke and shrapnel inward over those inside now covering their ears.

He disappeared into that smoke before Michael found the bearings to follow. Reaching the room to find two dead gunmen and a man wearing a dark blue suit jacket with red tassels on the shoulders and bars identifying him as a colonel in the SRI.

Or
Securitate
.

“
Vă
rog!”
he pleaded in Romanian. “Please!”

His shoulders rested against the wall, trembling hands raised in the air. The desk behind which he had hidden was cluttered with files and photos the colonel was in the process of dumping into a flaming trash bin. Smoke, ash, and char from the smoldering refuse thickened the air, coating it with a gray sheen.

Michael watched Alexander jam the taped suppressor on his submachine gun under the man's double chin, finger coiled over the trigger.

“One chance. The girl—where is she?”

One of the colonel's hands flopped back to his side while the other pointed a single finger upward. “Fourth floor. All the way down on right.”

“Keys,” Alexander demanded. “Keys!”

The colonel's lowered hand moved to a pants pocket. Alexander slammed a booted foot atop it, mashing the fingers, and crouched to retrieve the keys himself. A slim pocketknife followed them out and Alexander pressed harder with his boot until he felt bones crack. Then reared back and slammed the man in the skull with the butt of his rifle. The colonel's eyes rolled back in his head and his face fell forward to his chest, dazed but still conscious.

“Michael,” Alexander called, backpedaling while keeping his eyes on the colonel whose expression was now twisted in agony.

Michael watched the smoke from the flaming trash bin waft over the floor, a patch opening to reveal a thick folder waiting to join the others in the fire.

“Now!” Alexander ordered from the doorway.

But Michael had already stooped to retrieve the folder, his senses drifting in dreamlike fashion over the picture clipped to its front of a man he was sure he recognized.

Because it was his father.

 

SIXTY-TWO

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As a much younger man, late twenties or early thirties, probably, some time in the late 1950s.

What was his picture doing on the desk of a colonel in the Romanian
Securitate
?

Michael peeled the picture back to better read the name scrawled partially beneath it.

Davide Schapira.

He regarded the folder again, the picture and the name, wondering if his vision had been skewed by the goggles and the smoke. But it hadn't. This was definitely Vito Nunziato.

Then who was Davide Schapira?

Michael tucked the thick contents of the folder under his ammo vest. He felt Alexander grasp him hard at the elbow and tug, the sound of wailing sirens clear in his mind now. The two of them surged back into the hallway for the stairs. Michael heard moans of pain and occasional screams from the security forces who'd managed to survive the onslaught. The next thing he knew he was following Alexander down the fourth-floor hall toward a locked door on the right-hand side.

Facing the rear of the building, just as Alexander had surmised.

Michael trained his weapon back toward the stairs, while Alexander fit the key into the lock. The Heckler & Koch submachine gun suddenly felt heavy in his hands, as if its cooling steel made for a heavier tote. He heard Alexander kick the unlocked door all the way open, ready with his submachine gun as well, and rushed to join him in the doorway.

Scarlett Swan sat chained to a wooden plank table, fear and resignation claiming her expression when she saw weapons in the hands of two masked figures, certain she was going to die. Until Michael peeled up his mask and her eyes widened, in shock and then relief.